Kitman Labs’ profiles track every aspect of an athlete

kitman labs

Stephen Smith experienced firsthand the frustration of siloed information as an academy rugby player and then as a sport scientist at Leinster Rugby in Ireland beginning in 2008. He digitized the handwritten strength and conditioning records and built a longitudinal database that had utility across departments: fitness profiles, player development benchmarks, rehab protocols and more.

That database became the foundational idea behind Kitman Labs, which now works with more than 2,000 teams, leagues and regulatory bodies. Its Intelligence Platform supersedes standard athlete management systems with electronic medical records featuring all required compliance measures, coaching dashboards and league operations tools. Just in 2023, Kitman signed leaguewide deals of massive scope with the NFL, Premier League, NWSL and MLS Next. 

“We have this vision for this Knights of the Round Table approach,” Smith said, describing a multidisciplinary, collaborative process within clubs. “But we realized very quickly, it wasn’t just about bringing the data together. It was actually about helping people understand what it meant, and that’s why we wanted to introduce the concept of research and analytics on top of this, to help people turn that into shared intelligence.” 

Talent development has become an area of increasing attention. Kitman will now provide the data infrastructure behind the Premier League’s Elite Player Performance Plan, an initiative to help member clubs maximize their academy systems. It’s a similar undertaking with the 12,000 athletes across 600 teams in MLS Next. 

“It allows us to create, for the very first time in this industry, a 360-degree profile of every aspect of an athlete,” Smith said, adding that it will be “the richest data set we’ve ever seen on athletic development, performance, health, etc., that has ever existed.”